The Man Without: F.E.A.R. 2 360/PC

Stop me if you have heard this one: mute protagonist known as “Point Man” blessed with psychic/physical abilities to perceive time as a higher rate and plagued by nightmarish visions of a deranged and violent little girl shoots his way to the revelation that the bad guy, Fettlel, is in fact his cannibalistic brother. Both characters are children of the the little girl Alma, who is projecting her younger self from cryo-storage in the basement of a facility. Alma is a powerful psychic driven insane by extended experimentation and apparently, raped to pregnancy.

Games-In-Brief: Spring/Summer 2009

A massive slew on ongoing personal stuff including moving my family 3500 km has been distraction. I am working to keep them under better management to prevent further distraction.
I rotate through a pile of games, as I usually get to play in chunks, and when I get frustrated, I quit. Here is a list of the games currently plaguing my shelves and hard drives:

The Witcher: Extended Edition- A visual feast of an RPG with truly adult themes and content (without being gratuitous), the combat is a bit wonky. Unfortunately the most recent patch destroyed my install so I am re-installing and re-patching.
Supreme Commander- This epic RTS has been a blast to play but the biggest impediment is that the missions grow massive and timely as you play. I am wary of starting what appears to be an end-game, as the initial mission space is massive and looks to only get bigger. I also suck at RTS’s
World in Conflict- I left this game behind a while ago on an abandoned Vista partition-Win 7 is spectacular, and leaves me thinging I will be nuking that partition so I should finish the game. A tight, accessible RTS, it is visually enthralling and can really push a system. Great story too.
Far Cry 2- Visuals again lead the pack in this game, as does the dynamic weather, day/night and fire propagation systems. The open ended nature of the game leaves the experience entirely to the player, which can be daunting. Like Supreme Commander, this game has a potential to be a massive time –sink as the exploration of the world is far more compelling than any story missions. More annoying is the compressed and apparently time-adjusted dialogue, which makes everyone, talk as if they are running at 1.5X.
F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point – A reasonable expansion pack to the original, it builds on the atmosphere of the first game, bumps up the weapons, but still leaves the player fighting inside warehouses and corridors. The A.I., while more cleverly scripted than actual A.I., is challenging and exciting.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Not yet graduated to the Clear Sky prequel, this game, while initially buggy, has finally been patched to a tight, unique experience. As much RPG as shooter, it has a vibrant exciting world with threats from all side and looks fantastic.
Age Of Conan- I have jumped back into this ultra-violent yet striking MMO with renewed vigor, as new content has been released, opening areas of the world previously unexplored. Recent patches addressed balancing issues, which required me to re-outfit my avatar with new skill trees, but the new far more granular feedback on stats is welcome.
Titan Quest- A pretty Diablo clone RPG is accessible and entertaining, though driven solely through mouse-clicks. The resounding thud of a shield bash is satisfying, though I feel like I am not leveling properly. Distribution of skill points is a bit obtuse and unlike as to potential benefits.
Fallout 3- Though I have not purchased or played any DLC, I continue my quest through the capital wastes, avoiding the game ending mission in order to finally and fully explore the map. Now essentially overpowered and able to walk through (almost) any enemy in the game, especially accompanied by weaponized companions, I am playing to explore, and discovering new and weird things every time.
Xbox Live Arcade has gotten my attention with two game demos: Shadow Complex and Trials HD. Shadow Complex is a gorgeous side-scroller rendered in 3D, following the old-school vibe of the original Metroid. The Unreal Engine is stunning as ever and this massive arcade download comes complete with full rendered cut scenes. Ridiculously fun and might in fact pry $20 from my cold hands in the form of 1200 Microsoft points. Trials HD is a physics based 3D almost-isometric view of a motorcycle stunt driver who the player has manipulate through a serious of ever more challenging jumps and tricks. Controlled only by acceleration, braking and leaning back or forward, the bike and rider are sent hurtling through the air into flips and ramp slide, often culminating in a massive ragdoll crash. Deliriously entertaining, it looks like a steal as well.

Condemning Manhunt

Still fresh for me was the controversy surrounding Manhunt, the only game to have been rated “R” in Ontario. Given I ran an EBgames during that period imagine my shock and horror when I discovered (while at the hospital no less) that I had been “stung” by the local tv crew selling it to a “minor” (girl was 18 in less than a month and made up to look like an adult, then put on camera in pigtails).
Lo these 5 years later I have finally played and beaten the game, and honestly I don’t get it. Hindsight tends to clarify most things and though I can understand the brouhaha, unfairly directed at Rockstar specifically due to the GTA series, the game just isn’t that bad. Other games made around the same time or soon after are far more graphic, an issue that plagued Manhunt 2. Clearly the subject matter and “execution” gameplay mechanic were the tipping points in this issue, but I found the game to be entertaining and reasonably fun. Perhaps more importantly I appreciated the unflinching depiction of human filth and the depravity people are capable of expressing. Not unlike the 24 hour exposure our world receives of horrible images often without context on the news, this game expresses a singular vision of exploitation.
The sneaking mechanics of the game are now well-worn and the limitations of the hardware available at the time are apparent in the graphics and A.I. That aside, 2/3rds of the game make for reasonably varied play, only to collapse into stop and pop shooting mechanics which fail the central conceit. The ending is singularly unsatisfying but again, very little in this game was truly unnerving or disturbing (except for Pigsy’s junk dangling, lovingly).
Comparatively, Condemned, released on the Xbox 360 not long after Manhunt, is a far more visceral, graphic and disturbing game. An FPS driven on what appears to be an early build of what would become the F.E.A.R. engine is brutally violent, and also contains execution style mechanics. However, the player character is a cop tracking a serial killer rather than a serial killer tracking and killing cops (amongst others). This distinction along with the “snuff-film” plot is what drove the controversy against Manhunt. Context, as with all media, appears to be everything

The PC Piracy Crysis-(or why Crytek are whiners)

Crytek president Cevat Yerli announced recently that piracy is driving Crytek away from PC exclusives and towards the consoles. Though Crysis sold an estimated 1.5 million copies world-wide, Crytek, based on bittorrent tracker stats, feel their game has underperformed. Read that again: based on tracker stats their game under-performed. Noting that there were approx 15-20 pirate copies for each copy sold, and acknowledging that this does not equate 1 to 1 sales, Yerli still states “sales would be double without piracy”.

I am pretty sure the music industry ran this argument about 10 years ago and it is no more valid now than then. Pirated copies do not equate lost sales. Here are some thoughts about why Crysis “underperformed”.

1) Hype

Hype is an intangible fluid thing that can teeter in an instant from “just right” to “too much” depending on the sensibilites and tastes of the desired audience. A game announced early in development can drop off the radar unless it has a killer concept that “sells itself” (Brutal Legend and Dead Space come to mind). A game relentlessly promoted can become old news before it is released (ie.Black) and have to win back flagging interest.

The hype around Crysis encapsulates many of the reasons it “underperformed”, creating a whole much less than the sum of its parts.

For almost a year prior to the release of Crysis every gaming magazine and website whored screenshots and gushed preview “news” as the tiniest detail was revealed by the developers. The message behind it all: “This game will rape your last-gen or current gen top of the line hardware.” For hardware pigs with more money than brains, this is enticing as they are the ultra hardcore, the ultra-core, and they are a niche market. Knowing that a) the game is an FPS b) is coming soon and c) will require you to upgrade your PC that was great two years ago at considerable expense is not attractive to the mainstream. Add the generic “super-soldiers vs. aliens” plot, the details of which, when revealed, failed to excite, and you have a game that is over-exposed, to say the least. It’s as if the marketing team at EA had no clue how to sell the game, other than “Hey the guys who made Far Cry are making it”. To achieve mainstream penetration hype has to amount to more than specs and a thing plot, it has to be enticing to everybody. Thus far, games that have that level of marketability are accessible in terms of gameplay, hardware and content. Crysis is none of these things.


2) Hardware Specifications

Crysis was promoted from the get-go as the next step of PC gaming, in terms of the graphics. It was promised to punish current gen hardware and was designed, like Far Cry (to a lesser extent) to be “future proof” in that not-yet-released hardware would be required to run the game at its highest capabilities. While pushing tech is a hallmark of PC gaming, Crytek overshot this mark to the extent of alienating its audience. Buying a game knowing it will run on your machine but look like crap and knowing you can’t run it all are two different things. This is a failure on the developer’s part, simply because they either overestimated the install base of hardware that could (barely) run the game acceptably or their audience’s willingness to upgrade, or both. Taking a page from Valve’s playbook would have served this game well, given that the Source engine seems to be infinitely scalable and looks great, something Crysis, and its predecessor Far Cry fail at. As point of reference, I bought Far Cry to run on an over-clocked 1.8 gig Sempron, 2 gigs DDR and an ATI 512 meg 1650 video card. This same setup carried me through Quake 4, Half Life 2 Ep 1, and F.E.A.R., though in fairness, I had bought Far Cry prior to any of these games but never finished it (it would ultimately last me through 3 different PCs). While able to play the game, it was only until I upgraded my entire system to an overclocked 2.8 gig Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs DDR (dual channel) and a PCI-E overclocked XFX 6800 (256 megs) that I would be able to play it at 30+ FPS will all the bells and whistles turned on, at my monitor’s native res of 1440 x 900. This new hand-picked and built system cost a miserly (in Pc terms) $600.

This same system would wheeze through Crysis at 960 X 600 and manage at worst 11 FPS and at best 35 FPS with all settings on low. By comparison, I finished Half-Life 2 Ep 2 on the prior machine, with only the final strider battle giving unacceptable framerates and low visual quality. With the new system, I tore through the same sequence with everything maxed out and never dipped below 30 FPS. I also beat F.E.A.R on the Sempron box, but again can now run the game at native rez with settings maxed out.

The unpalatable and frankly intimidating aspect of Crysis is that not only will the game require a $5000 dollar machine to play it max, but just to look at it you need to be running a $1000 machine built in the last 2 years. What percentage of the hundreds of millions of PC’s in North America meet the minimum specs alone? 10%? Maybe 2% meet the max and that would be a generous estimate. The absolute maximum attainable sales this game could have at and around launch would have been 2-3 million units because no one else would be able to play it even if the wanted to. Yerli feels that the exclusivity of being a PC only release should have driven more sales, while ignoring the concept that Crysis was not only PC exclusive, but exclusive to a very few PC’s.

The end result is that Crytek effectively developed their way out of the market with this game, leaving behind 75% of the install base in their wake. This is especially glaring given the Sims franchise has just reached the 100 million sales mark. While they are two different genres and two different audiences, it is a clear reminder that accessibility will trump specs any day.

3) Quality

Crysis, if you can run it, is a spectacular looking game. The enemy AI is reasonably good, the environments are detailed and beautiful and the effects used in the game are excellent. However, while it is a massive step up from Far Cry in terms of story, pacing, character animation and voice-acting, it is still a fairly run-of-the-mill by the numbers FPS.

Game quality seems to have three distinct subsets: graphics, story, and gameplay. A great game excels at all three, while a good game has two. No game can be successful resting on the laurels of only one of these subsets as Doom III and Quake 4 can attest. While the gameplay in Crysis did achieve some moments of tension and excitement, it failed to reach the heights set by games like F.E.A.R. Despite the latter’s repetitive environments and so-so story, the intense and unrelentingly gameplay, aided by superior A.I. and beautiful visuals drove sales. Crysis raises the bar in visual fidelity while being average in gameplay and story. If your game requires a significant hardware upgrade then it better be really good at least two of the above, and Crysis is not.

Comparisons to Crytek’s previous effort may well have hindered sales also. Far Cry is a beautifully rendered game, with open non-linear exploration of its environment. It has reasonably tight gameplay and A.I., however the story is just plain awful with some of the worst voice acting on record. Gamers non-plused by Far Cry may well have skipped Crysis if only because they expected more of the same. In a market where your reputation precedes you, you are only as good as your last release.

In the end, Crytek were their own worst enemies in this case and unfortunately it appears to be a lesson unlearned.

I play a hell of a lot of games it seems--

so I figured I would compile a list of the games I have played, beaten, loved and hated for this year. Please note, this does not necessarily mean games released this year as I have a tendency to walk away from games that frustrate me until the itch to play them starts again...


GAMES I HAVE BEATEN IN 2007 (for the first time)

Easily the best game I have beaten for pure entertainment value has been Bioshock. Despite a mediocre tacked on ending, this is the first game that for me has displayed the true potential of games as an artform. The painterly art direction combined with thematic depth and subtext of the story make this a true masterpiece, topped off with a real emotional punch.

The Darkness and Mass Effect also demonstrate the power of the next(current?) gen hardware when combined with real storytelling and a commitment to quality, especially in voice-acting. While Mass Effect delivers a ridiculous amount of value in its 25+ hours of gameplay it does suffer from tech issues, such as slowdowns and framerate drops. It is also not as revolutionary as hoped, with an overall feel of Knights of the Old Republic redux. The Darkness delivers top quality writing and performance with a story and delivers a real emotional gut punch early on. While it never again reaches that level of immersion, the graphics and gameplay are excellent.

God of War I & II deliver visceral intensity and pitch-perfect gameplay-the third in this series will be the only reason I buy a PS3 (to date)

VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE:BLOODLINES is one of the rare FPS/RPG's works. Despite the game developer going under and the game being under-cooked at release, a thriving mod community has continued to patch and upgrade the game past the official releases. While the staples of RPG's (grinding, leveling up) are present, the content which explores a mature rating in the best possible way (i.e. not gratuitously) provides massive game play value and entertainment. Like many games of this type, (Mass Effect, Dark Messiah) the combat is nowhere near as tight as one would expect from an FPS/action game but not a deal breaker.

F.E.A.R-FPS action combined with Asian-horror scares makes for a good but short time. The A.I. in this game is unparalleled and even with the visuals scaled down for a low-end machine, it is extremely playable and looks good too. Repetitive level design drag down the imaginative story but the intensity of the action keeps the heart pumping.

GEARS OF WAR & HALO 3 led the action assault in the past 12 months on the Xbox360, each dropping in time for the holidays of 2006 & 2007 respectively. While I originally derided Gears for its repetitive "stop & pop" game play and paper thin story, in the end, the pure intensity of the combat and gorgeous visuals won me over. Halo 3's story is not only thin, but launches itself past ambiguity to incomprehensibility. It is still the perfect FPS for the xbox, with tight responsive controls and well-executed (pun intended) enemy A.I. The graphics are strangely variable from drop dead gorgeous to placeholder matte art that seems to have been missed. The finale (post credits) is a satisfying wrapup to the storyline (such as it is) and solidify the emotional resonance between the Master Chief and Cortana.

CALL OF DUTY 4 was a non-stop thrill-ride from start to finish, with stunning visuals, good (if not original)storytelling and even some resonance. It hides the linear aspect of the game with the intensity of the firefight, though the players squad often take on more than they should, leaving me less the leader of the fight than a follower. Fantastic game.

CRACKDOWN is one of the hidden gems of this year, a game many people only to access the Halo 3 beta unfotunately. Much like Hulk:Ultimate destruction, the open world aspect of the game is fantastic, as is the vertical play, with towering skylines to ascend. Grand Theft Superhero is the best description to apply, though I skipped the driving aspect entirely. A very entertaining way to spend some time shooting things and leaping from tall buildings.

Prince of Perisa:The Sands of Time: After finally reading the manual I figured out how to beat the elevating room sequence and then game....years later. A fantastic entry, improved upon by the second sequel The Two Thrones, which I still haven't beat. The Warrior Within was acquired recently and thought it is a much prettier game visually, it is not as good as the 1st nor the last.

When I have time I will post the games I am still playing, and those I played and ditched.